What's Stopping Us From Breathing Easy [Open to All]

[applesaucemod]

Dreamers of Manhattan, you've lucked out. Rather than finding yourselves in some kind of dystopian nightmare, you'll end up in a series of formal gardens on a lovely day, the air filled with birdsong and a cloud-scattered sky arching overhead. Some of the gardens look a bit wilder than others, in an artful sort of way, but it's clear that all of the gardens are well kept and frequently tended. Aside from each other, dreamers aren't likely to run into any creature larger than a rabbit. True, there are no actual exits - every doorway or arbor leads to another garden - but that's hardly a problem. It's beautiful, it's safe... what could go wrong?

Well, that depends on the dreamer's honesty. No uncomfortable truths will drop unbidden from anyone's mouths like last time, but the dreamers will find that any time they attempt to lie or prevaricate, they'll be beset by a sneezing fit. A tiny lie by omission might only prompt that uncomfortable feeling of an impending sneeze; a larger, more significant (or more stubborn) fib will lead to a sneeze attack so crippling that the dreamer might just need to sit down for a minute.

You could try to pass it off as allergies, if you could get the words out without making everything worse. But while telling the truth is not compulsory, lying is punishable - and pretty well obscured - by sneezes.

[OOC: Usual dream party rules apply. All are welcome to participate regardless of whether they've been apped in the game or not. Dreamers can remember or forget the events of the dream at the players' discretion.]

Comments

[driftseeker]

She has never known such what? Irritation? Inconvenience? The A.I. set in place to manage the individual Conn-Pods had not been capable of being so human. As much as she may proclaim to loathe it, the fact that she can communicate things like disdain and discomfort puts her far, far above anything Mako has ever encountered.

Mako shrugs one shoulder, subdued. "Monsters from the sea," she says simply. It is The A.I.'s choice whether or not she would like to believe it. She is not sure how unbelievable the notion may seem to anyone who has also been displaced into Manhattan. "It does not matter anymore. Manhattan made sure of that."

Eager to divert the subject, she tilts her chin in false, noncommittal dismissal. "What about you? Did you end up there too?"

[centralcore]

Well. That's different. Glados continues to frown though the cause is becoming increasingly, frustratingly abstract. The woman continues to say nothing outwardly objectionable, continues not to assist her determination of the extent of this dream's... quirk. She is altogether... polite.

Why must she be like this.

"Yes, I did," she says, resentful but quiet. "It is quite recent. I am..." No. She cannot say she is adapting. And she does not wish to speak of her past history with strife. She must keep this very simple. "...Unhappy," she decides eventually.

[driftseeker]

"I only just got here too," says Mako. "I think I dreamed here before. Before the Rift took me."

She looks at Glados, trying for a faint, sympathetic smile. "It is not so bad, I think. But maybe I had to adjust to less than you did." She did not have a hand in programming the original A.I. for the Jaeger tech, but it never expressed any proclivity for emotion. Unhappy might be a new expression for her, and maybe under any other circumstance that would be cause for celebration. "I was always human."

[centralcore]

"How wonderful for you," says Glados coolly, looking down her nose at the unsatisfyingly courteous creature before scanning the immediate horizon. "And were your dreams always like this?"

She doubts it. She can't imagine. She would hope not, if she had the remotest reason to care.

[driftseeker]

Something about having the full force of that stare levered upon her is both unpleasant and unbearable, and she looks back to the water as she suppresses a shiver.

"No," says Mako, quietly. "Not until just before the Rift took me."

But she does not like to remember her dreams. They were always the same, and Onibaba always ravaged the city while she ran and knew, with a crushing, sinking pit in her chest, that she was already alone.

She thinks she likes the Rift's dreams better. They are less personal, in most ways. She prefers that.

She makes a soft, almost amused sound, kicking up droplets of water and watching them scatter across the surface. "I do not know if A.I.s dream. Have you ever dreamed before?"

[centralcore]

"We do not, where I come from," she says coldly. "I-" It is so utterly grating that she cannot simply answer no, never, as she would like. She narrows her eyes and says, "Perhaps I dreamed at one time. I do not recall."

Well, she can manage that without sneezing at least.

This is so humiliating.

The implications of what Mako's just told her are interesting, though - that these dreams are a whim of the Rift's, perhaps even a step for preparation. She didn't get them before coming through, perhaps because she was incapable dreaming before. What purpose do they serve? There must be a purpose - it cannot simply be 'just because'. Well, she supposes it could, but she'd have to put in several complaints.

Who gets complaints about a semisapient spacetime breach?

"I suppose this could be a mode of observation," she says, mostly to herself. "All of us rats in a maze. Hm."

Not a bad idea, that.

[driftseeker]

"You dreamed," she breathes, more than slightly awed. She dreams, has a self-awareness, and a concept of herself. "That is - incredible."

She does not want to stare, but the person that stands beside her - ramrod straight, human in appearance but insistent on her identity to the contrary, something mechanical given flesh and form - is more human than more humans she has known.

She cannot contain it. "You are so human."

That cannot be a polite thing to say, and she regrets it at once.

[centralcore]

"Is it," she says, and then immediately, at that brazen and entirely uncalled-for remark (and still, infuriatingly, without a single sneeze), "am I."

She is appalled. She is insulted. She is completely engulfed with rage.

"Did you mean that to be a compliment?" she asks in a pleasantly curious tone.

[driftseeker]

That is not a good tone of voice. It reminds her, subtly, of Pentecost's implicit threats in the face of opposition. She feels herself diverting sharply into two pathways.

Like she can do anything about it, scoffs Raleigh.

It is not obedience, she argues.

"I mean it as an observation," says Mako in as neutral a tone as she can possibly employ for someone wrestling with her own cognitive dissonance. "Even if we had the technology, we never advanced that far."

[centralcore]

Mm, she's crafty, this one. Glados can respect that. Crafty humans usually (usually) make for better science.

"You are an excellent observer," she says, falling much more comfortably into a coldly friendly tone. "Yes, I am very human. I'll prove it. I am so human, I'm going to do the most human thing you can think of. Go ahead. Think of something."

She smiles, she thinks unnervingly.

"Do you need any helpful suggestions?"

[driftseeker]

She does not consider very long before she smiles, shyly.

"I think you are already doing it," Mako ventures. "You are dreaming."

Dreaming is not so unlike the Drift, particularly here. Though she would like to think that their minds are not so intimately joined in this way. As intriguing as she finds Glados, she does not think she would like to know her that well.

[centralcore]

Crafty and clever. Can this get any better.

Her smile doesn't falter. She lets out a low partial chuckle, a little "Hm."

"Actually," she says, "many artificial intelligences have been designed to dream. Just not me." She thinks this is probably a good time to make some sort of motion. Folding her arms, maybe? Yes. And looking imperiously down her nose. Good.

"I was thinking something more along the lines of die," she coos. "Did you know humans are very good at that? I did."

[driftseeker]

"Yes." She stares back at the impassive water, trying not to feel as though she is shrinking beneath the weight of the A.I.'s stare. "Almost everyone I have known is dead."

Dead, or lost to her.

For a moment her fingers tighten on the edge of lip of the pool, her knuckles blanching. Those memories are not for here or for now. Their weight is unbearable.

We all live with it, Mako, says Raleigh. We can always find 'em in the Drift.

But there is no Drift here.

"But all things die." She cannot look back at her. She does not want to see what might be in that woman's gaze. "Even machines. Not just humans. All things that feel die."

[centralcore]

Oh well that's no fun. It's pitiful, she can log that away for later, but there's no shock or horror, just grim acceptance. The human has so far eluded Glados' every attempt to unbalance her, and Glados is beginning to tire of it.

"I died," she says curtly. "And I came back. That's the joy of being a machine that feels. It's easy to bring us back. It wasn't even on purpose. Someone flipped the switches by accident. Because he was a moron." She curls her lip in disgust. Still minutely aware of every little facial twitch, even though this is not physically happening. "Humans are very good at being temporary, until they're permanently dead."

There's an itch, somewhere, not like the Itch, but something all the same, pressing around the edges of her awareness, something hard and sharp and painful. Getting into her voice and her - feelings. Ugh. She does not like it. This woman must be causing it somehow, so Glados backs away.

"I should be going," she says coolly. "Other humans to taunt. I'm very busy, you know."

[driftseeker]

To create a machine that feels. It sounds like some kind of sin of science, something that should not be allowed. She is sure Glados would not appreciate the acute spike of sympathy that darkens her gaze, but she finds it difficult to contain regardless.

Perhaps the liminal nature of humanity is a blessing in its own right.

Mako keeps looking at the water.

"Of course," she says quietly. "I'm sorry to have kept you."